[Workers International News, Vol. 7, No. 5, June 1948, p. 1-10]
The recent events in Czechoslovakia had a profound effect both on the international relationships between the Great Powers and on the working class movement. An analysis of the events are important for an understanding of the role of the Stalinist Parties.
Even a cursory study of Czechoslovakian economy reveals the deep-going changes which have taken place. Today, the characteristic feature of the economy is not private, but state enterprise. The recent nationalisation measures and the further land reform constituted a blow at the remnants of the old ruling class in an economy where already two thirds of industry was under state control.
What is the role of Stalinism in relation to this social transformation? This is the question workers are asking.
The shattering of the Czech bourgeoisie in February was the result of the sharpening antagonism between the Russian bureaucracy and world imperialism, and the necessity of the former to secure complete control over the buffer states. The attack on the bourgeois remnants is solely due to the economic base on which the bureaucracy rests.
Already before this complete consolidation of their power, the Stalinists had been dominant in Czechoslovakia, a dominance which was determined by the specific conditions in Eastern Europe at the closing stages of the Second imperialist war. We can say, provisionally, that this was due to three main factors:-
a) The collapse of the bourgeois state with the defeat of the Nazi armies which resulted in the quisling bourgeoisie and their officialdom fleeing the country;
b) The emergence of Russia as the most powerful force in Europe and its domination of Eastern Europe;
c) The support given to Stalinism by the masses under the illusion that it was a genuine communist party.
The Situation of the Czech Capitalist Class
The economic policy pursued by German imperialism left the Czech capitalist class decimated and weakened. Already before the war, the Munich agreement had resulted in large sections of Czech industry passing under German control. Most of the economic assets in the areas then occupied were seized by the German big banks and industrial concerns. Later, after the whole of Czechoslovakia was occupied, German imperialism consolidated its economic domination when the Dresdner and Deutsche Bank took over the Czech banks. As these banks had great interests in industry by means of stocks and debentures, by taking them over, German capitalism thereby gained control of large sections of industry. The expropriation of Jewish capitalists further weakened the native Czech bourgeoisie. The domination of German capital was expressed particularly through the Hermann Goering Trust. G. Beuer, in „New Czechoslovakia“, writes:
„The Goering concern mainly concentrated on gaining control of the armaments industry and coal production … by seizing the Bohemian Discount Bank it gained control of the Poldi Steel Works. Then it seized the famous Škoda Works (Plzeň) the largest among the Czech armament works, and the big armaments works in Brno, all the shares of which were state property. Thus the three largest Czechoslovak armaments works came into the possession of the Goering concern. It also seized iron and steel-works which could be utilised for the production of armaments such as the Vitkovice Iron Works, the Prague Iron works, etc. Of the Czechoslovak coal supplies, it took possession of most of the lignite coal industry in North Western Bohemia and the coal production in the Ostrava Karvin district. In co-operation with the Dresdner Bank it controlled about 75% of all North West Bohemian lignite coal production…“
Sections of the non-Jewish capitalists in light industries collaborated with German imperialism. The Radical and petty bourgeois politicians, such as Beneš, whose basis had been created in the struggle against the decadent Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to 1914-18, and who had built up Czech capitalism with the aid of French and English capital, saw their future in the Allied camp. Their attitude toward Stalinism was dictated by two factors. First, the support given by the masses to the Stalinists, who after 1941 played the dominant role in the leadership of the resistance movement. Second, the change in the military position of the Soviet Union after Stalingrad and the increasing evidence that it would emerge after the war as the dominant power in Eastern Europe displacing the Western bourgeoisie, particularly that of France which, before the rise of Nazi Germany, had the hegemony of this area.
The recognition of these factors was shown in 1943 when representatives of the Czech émigrés went to Moscow to form a Provisional Government together with representatives of the resistance movement. There, in December 1943, President Beneš concluded a Soviet-Czech treaty of „lasting friendship and mutual assistance.“ According to the „Tribune“ (5.3.48), he “later advocated a voluntary self-limitation of the democratic parties. These democratic parties, he demanded, should never go into opposition or govern without the Communists.“
Faced with the existing relationship of forces, the bourgeois representatives had no option but to concede to the Stalinists in the Émigré National Front Government. This Government was formed out of the „National Front of Czechs and Slovaks“ which consisted of four Czech parties, the Stalinists, the Social Democrats, the Czech National Socialists (Beneš‘ Party), and the Clerical Peoples‘ Party – and the two Slovak Parties – Stalinists and Democrats,
The Role of the Stalinist in the „Liberation“
Stalinist policy in Czechoslovakia as elsewhere, was dictated not by the needs of the masses, but by the strategic and military interests of the Russian bureaucracy. Until 1941, they played no role in the resistance movement. But with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, they took the leadership in the underground struggle. After Stalingrad their support increased. Their programme was by no means revolutionary. On the contrary, it was based on the most virulent forms of race hatred and chauvinism. As in the other occupied countries, they placed the main stress on the defeat of the Hitlerite invader in collaboration with the bourgeoisie. But among the working class and the rank and file of the Communist Party who were forced into struggle against the occupation, there was a desire to direct the struggle against German imperialism along class lines. In the later stages, workers committees took over control in practically every factory. In numerous localities, improvised workers soviets, national committees and workers militia took over the local government apparatus.
It was a natural consequence of the role of Stalinism that the Communist Party used the capital it had gained in the resistance struggle to hamstring the activity of the proletariat and attempt to destroy the class consciousness and confidence of the masses.
Their aim was to maintain control in the hands of the Provisional Government through the National Committees, in which the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie participated, and to confine the resistance movement within the narrow bounds of military aid to the Soviet Union.
The outcome of the insurrection which took place in Prague in May 1945 when the German army capitulated, was pre-determined by the presence of the Red Army fighting 90 miles to the East, while the American forces waited, arms at rest, for the arrival of the Russian army at the border of the previously fixed zone – hardly 25 miles from Prague.
The National Front Government moved in with the victorious Red Army. The Stalinist policy, in co-operation with the other parties in the National Front, was to re-create in Czechoslovakia a state administration and apparatus on the pattern of the pre-war bourgeois democratic republic. The „Economist“ of 9. 2. 46 described the situation thus:
„When the country was liberated, the councils and committees were really more powerful than the central Government, which had no armed forces at its disposal and which came in from abroad at the heels of the victorious Russians. Tor months therefore, much of the Government’s time was taken up with bringing the councils and committees into a more normal relationship with the central authority.“
Naturally, by „normal relationship“, the „Economist“ means the relationship which exists between the state and the masses in a bourgeois country, where, as Lenin made plain in „State and Revolution„, the state apparatus is separate from the masses and without their free participation and control.
In relation to the state apparatus, the role of the Stalinists was counter revolutionary. In conditions where the German imperialists, having smashed the old Czech state, had in their turn collapsed; where the workers had already begun to set up organs which would commence the transition ta socialism, a revolutionary leadership of the working class had the duty to deepen and accelerate the process of independent class action, the setting up of workers councils and peasants committees. It would have linked them up to create a central state form covering the whole of national life. On the basis of nationalised industry and the land, it would have commenced real socialist planning on the basis of workers control and the participation of the masses in every aspect of its activities. However, the Stalinists sought to curb the activity of the masses. The „Times“ special correspondent in the issue of 25th July, wrote:
„In 1945, when Czechoslovakia was full of the liberating Red Army forces, the Czech communists could have seized complete power, and chose not to do so.”
The main reason for this was to prevent the establishment of a Soviet state on the pattern of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Stalinists made a coalition of „national unity“ with the powerless representatives of the capitalist parties in order to prevent the complete consummation of the revolution. But they kept the key positions in their own hands. They created an apparatus of repression under their control, obedient to then and in the image of the state machine controlled by the Stalinists in Russia. The „armed bodies of men“ and their appendages which, in the last analysis, constitute the state, remained under the control of the Stalinists. Thus they replaced the shattered Czech capitalist state with a new apparatus of repression. The capitalist representatives in the Government were merely a cover for the formation of a now Stalinist state apparatus which effectively stifled the initiative of the masses.
At the same time, the coalition with the shadow of the bourgeoisie was intended to placate western imperialism in line with the alliances then existing, and to facilitate western economic aid.
The state which the Stalinists built up with the aid of the Social Democrats and the petty bourgeois parties, contained within its framework the National Committees, which acquired similar functions to municipal and rural councils in Britain, based on representatives of permitted political parties which formed part of the National Front. The seats were divided between the parties by the National Front.
In the factories, according to the „New Times“ (28. 1. 48), „… the workers took over for the … time being the management of the industrial plants, turning out the traitors and collaborationists who had served the Nazis.“ Or as the „Economist“ of 9. 2. 46 put it: „The Employees Committees tried, in the first fine careless rapture of revolutionary enthusiasm, to dictate how the factories should be managed …“ However, the decree establishing the status of these Committees confined them to questions affecting the welfare of the workers, managerial functions being vested in governmental nominees.
A further checking of the initiative of the workers was guaranteed by the method of election to the Works Councils and set up within the Trade Unions. After the consolidation of the National Front Government, when the elections to the factory committees took place, a single list of candidates was presented by the united trade organisation of the enterprise. These trade organisations were dominated by the Stalinists or their fellow travellers in the Social Democratic party, a dominance gained in the first hectic period of the liberation. As the Stalinist Beuer puts it in his book „New Czechoslovakia“ : „Works Councils were elected for one year by direct and secret ballot on the basis of lists of candidates put forward by the united trade organisation of the enterprise. The elector has the right to delete names.“ (Our emphasis).
It is not unimportant to mention in this connection that, in spite of this method of procedure, the lists of the Central Trade Union in the spring elections of 1946, were not passed in the voting in about 50% of the enterprises, and new elections with candidates (again put forward by the factory organisations of the trade unions) had to take place. In these elections also, that is, in the second scrutiny, in many important enterprises the lists of the unified trade unions did not receive the required two-thirds majority, so that the Central Trade Union, according to the electoral law, had to appoint the factory committees. This information from Czechoslovakia gives the reason why the „Economist“ correspondent, dealing with the limitation of the powers of the works committees, could declare on 9. 2. 46: „The result has been a marked reaction even among the workers themselves, not in favour of the old capitalist system, but at any rate against what has taken its place.“
The Economic Changes Under the National Front Government
On 24th October 1945, the National Front Government issued a Decree nationalising the key industries and banks, and bringing approximately two thirds of industry under state control. They had already, four months before, issued a decree on the confiscation and allotment of rural property owned by „Germans, Hungarian and Czechoslovak traitors“. The nationalisation covered a) the mines, natural resources, and big iron and steel enterprises including armaments; b) certain large enterprises in the food and drink industries; c) the banks; d) insurance companies.
Private enterprise continued to operate smaller undertakings in many industries and dispossessed owners of large properties were entitled to ask leave to start afresh in competition with the state, the latter having a full monopoly only in enterprises exploiting natural resources, producing armaments, or regarded as key industries. Private enterprise in other spheres was also guaranteed protection and continuity, however prosperous it might afterwards become. To quote Fierlinger, in an interview with Beuer at the end of 1945:
„… Through the nationalisation of key industries, banks, etc. the way to better development and greater prosperity will be paved for industries remaining in private hands, as they depend on the controlled organisation — of heavy industries and credits with low interest, which will be furnished by the nationalised banks.“
The value of the nationalised property, according to the decrees, would be assessed at „current market prices“, and compensation paid either in „Government bonds, cash or other values“, from a special fund, but that „nationally unreliable“ people and „disloyal“ Czechoslovaks would not receive compensation.
The pro-Stalinist Social Democratic Prime Minister, Fierlinger, in the interview accorded to Beyer at the end of 1945, stated: —
„Of course, all this (‘the nationalisations, etc.) is not to say that Czechoslovak economy is already, or is directly on the way to becoming a socialist economy. The new economy is not the result of a proletarian revolution. It is the outcome of a national democratic anti-fascist revolution.“
Under the concrete conditions in which the German occupation had left Czech economy, even the capitalist remnants recognised that, for the present, there was no possibility of a return to private enterprise in the key sectors. of the economy. President Beneš, in an article in the Manchester Guardian, 15th December 1945, declared:
„The Germans simply took control of all main industries, main banks, If they did not nationalise them directly they put them in the hands of big German concerns … In this way they automatically prepared the economic and financial capital of our country for nationalisation. To return the property and the banks to the hands of Czech individuals or to consolidate them without considerable state assistance and new financial guarantees, was simply impossible.“
In the first stages after the „liberation“, the state appointed administrators in the factories where the German and collaborationist owners had been removed. However, the workers were against any return to the old system of private ownership. As Beneš pointed out, a return to individual ownership could have taken place to a limited extent on the basis of state aid; but that the masses would not have tolerated. Individual ownership, alternatively, could have been secured on the basis of foreign capitalist investment; but this, neither the masses nor the Russian bureaucracy would have tolerated.
The policy of the Stalinists was not motivated by the extension of the power of the workers and laying the basis of a socialist state. It was motivated by one thing: the creation of a „new type of democracy“ orientated economically and strategically towards the Soviet Union. The unstable coalition could not last, however much its sponsors might attempt to solidify it with the formula of the „common democratic interests“ of the masses and „that part of the bourgeoisie which had taken part in the national struggle.“
According to Beyer the small and medium industries, whose owners had fled during the liberation, were handed over into private Czech and Slovak hands. The Government programme was deliberately calculated to attract the small man, and in the 1946 elections, the Stalinists pledged themselves to maintain private enterprise in small industrial undertakings (employing 39%. of the industrial workers), as well as in farms und shops. On 13th June 1947, the Stalinist-controlled Czech T.U.C. declared the nationalisation programme to be complete.
Bourgeoisie Regain Confidence – The Marshall Plan
This direct encouragement of the small bourgeois, plus the bridle placed on the Czech workers by the state, and the stabilisation of the economy, contributed to the increasing confidence and accelerated the regroupment of the bourgeois forces. When American imperialism produced the Marshall Plan, the Czech bourgeoisie looked towards it as a further aid, knowing that its operation would lead to a weakening of Russian hegemony. As a result of the general „western“ orientation of Czech economy, the invitation to the first Marshall Plan discussion received immediate favourable response from the entire National Front Government, including the Stalinists. On 7th July, the Czechoslovak Government accepted the invitation to the Paris Conference. On the same day, Gottwald and Masaryk left for Moscow to discuss economic relations with the Soviet Union. On 10th July, the official Czech news agency announced the withdrawal of the Government from the Paris discussions. Henceforth the Marshall Plan became for the Stalinists the sinister weapon of American imperialism. Stalin blew the whistle: the obedient setter came to heel.
With the polarisation of world forces, with the attraction of the Marshall Plan, the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow was brought sharply up against the realisation that if Czechoslovakia was to be firmly integrated within the Russian orbit, then it could no longer afford to permit the continued existence of a bourgeois pressure-point amenable to American influence.
Before the February events, it was evident that the right wing was growing in strength. It was reported that the membership of their parties was increasing. The „Manchester Guardian“ stated on 3rd March 1948, that during the past few months the sale of “anti-communist“ literature was mounting noticeably and the „disappointment which many Czechs felt for their non-participation in the Marshall Plan was voiced more and more openly.“ Results in elections to students faculty committees in December showed a decrease in C.P. vote and an increase for other parties, including the Social Democrats. A certain swing away from the Stalinists among the workers was shown when Erban, a pro-Stalinist, now Minister of Social Welfare, was expelled from the Executive of the Social Democratic Party after a Conference at Brno last November.
When the Stalinists demanded further action against the bourgeoisie for an extension of nationalisations, it is clear they had the support of the workers. Sure of their complete control over the workers, confident that with the dominance of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe overshadowing the whole scene, it would not come to a decisive struggle in which the control would pass out of their leadership, the Stalinists armed sections of the workers and organised a demonstrative general strike for one hour. To widen their base among the peasantry, they proposed an extension of the land reform which had been carried through in 1945 after the peasants had spontaneously seized the land.
In face of this, the remnants of the Czech bourgeoisie were completely impotent. Though the placement of their most loyal adherents in the police force and through their sponsorship of the Action Committees, the Stalinists retained control throughout.
The Role of Stalinism
Today Czechoslovakia has been brought completely within the Russian orbit. The fundamental mechanics of the process which took place were entirely in accord with Trotsky’s analysis of the areas occupied by Russia in the beginning of the war. In speaking of the likely developments in these areas, he said:
„It is more likely, however, in the territories scheduled to become a part of the USSR, the Moscow Government will carry through the expropriation of the large land owners and statification of the means of production. This variant is most probable, not because the bureaucracy remains true to the socialist programme but because it is neither desirous nor capable of sharing the power, and the privileges the latter entails, with the old ruling classes in the occupied territories. Here an analogy literally offers itself. The first Bonaparte halted the revolution by means of a military dictatorship. However, when the French troops invaded Poland, Napoleon signed a decree ‚Serfdom is abolished‚. This measure was dictated not by Napoleon’s sympathies for the peasants, nor by democratic principles but rather by the fact that the Bonapartist dictatorship based itself not on feudal, but on bourgeois property relations. In as much as Stalin’s Bonapartist dictatorship bases itself not on private, but on state property, the invasion of Poland by the Red Army, should, in the nature of the case, result in the abolition of private capitalist property, so as thus to bring the regime of the occupied territories into accord with the regime of the USSR. This measure, revolutionary in character – ‚the expropriation of the expropriators‘ – is in this case achieved in a military bureaucratic fashion. The appeal to independent activity on the part of the masses in the new territories – and without such an appeal, even if worded with extreme caution it is impossible to constitute a new regime – will on the morrow undoubtedly be suppressed by ruthless police measures in order to assure the preponderance of the bureaucracy over the awakened revolutionary masses.“
The imposition of the police machine of the character which exists in the Soviet Union will not take place overnight in Czechoslovakia, which has an advanced working class with a tradition of organised struggle. Police measures against the workers will, however, undoubtedly increase as the Stalinists begin to lose support; as the workers (having no wish to return to the old system, but indeed, wishing to defend nationalised property against internal reaction or Western imperialism) are pushed into the realisation that the free development towards a socialist system of society is blocked by the Russian and Czech Stalinist bureaucracy.
While opposing any attempt of British or American imperialism to re-establish capitalism, we say, as Trotsky said of the social changes in Poland when the Russian army marched in 1939:
„The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organisation of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character und remains the chief obstacle on the road to world revolution … the extension of the territory dominated by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism, cloaked by ‘socialist‘ measures can augment the prestige of the Kremlin, engender illusions concerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution by bureaucratic manoeuvres and so on.“
Relative to a genuine struggle for world revolution, to the development of world socialism, to the struggle against the Third World War, Stalinist policy taken as a whole, remains reactionary. It is carried through with complete cynicism in regard to the workers.
In the first stages of the war, Stalinism aided German imperialism, then participated in the resistance movement but suppressed the revolutionary initiative of the masses by curtailing it within the bounds of a reactionary nationalism. It bolstered up the bourgeois remnants, creating a „New Type of Democracy“. And finally, when forced by strategic needs and the impossibility of maintaining indefinitely two fundamentally opposed economies -state property and private property- they eliminated their bourgeois „allies“ but not on the basis of the free and conscious participation of the proletarian masses in the control of industry and the state machine, but by the introduction of regimes in the image of that in totalitarian Russia.
There are people who will declare that it is only the end of the process that is important and that the fact that the capitalists and landlords were removed eventually, is alone decisive. However, the methods of the Stalinists in themselves have created vast problems and the elimination of the power of capitalist and landlord cannot be the basis for a genuine development toward socialism under the leadership of the Stalinist agents of the Kremlin bureaucracy.
The Stalinists substituted for Marxist internationalism a reactionary nationalism. The results of this policy were to engender national hatreds by which no advance towards socialism can take place. The expulsion of three million Germans from Sudetenland* a million of whom, according to Beneš were workers, led to a 20% loss in industrial capacity and provided a fruitful breeding ground for Western imperialism to stir up national hatreds in preparation for war. With their fellow Stalinists in Hungary and Poland they had disputes over the transfer of minorities, Together, the Russian bureaucracy and the Yugoslavian Stalinists became the largest mortgage holders in Hungarian economy, draining 18% of its industrial output.
Those who have forgotten, or never learned, that Marxist internationalism is not a pious phrase but a policy of dire necessity in view of the world division of labour and the impossibility of development of communism on the part of any single country without the aid of the world proletariat, may believe that by the expansion of the Russian orbit in Eastern Europe, the problems of building socialism have been solved. Were these changes in property forms linked with a policy of workers democracy and world revolution, then we could truly say that some of the worst difficulties were being overcome, If Stalinism was a revolutionary force, propagating an economic plan for the construction of a Socialist United States of Europe on the basis of the freest exchange of its resources – a plan which of necessity would hinge on Germany instead of reparations and occupation; – if capitalism was being substituted not by a bureaucratic and despotic totalitarian police regime, but on a regime based on workers democracy and control – such a movement would not be Stalinism. It would be a revolutionary internationalist force of irresistible attraction to the workers of the world which would completely undermine European and world capitalism.
The seizure of Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe does not solve the basic problem for the Soviet Union. The betrayal of the revolution in the West by Stalinism in 1945-47 and the subsequent reaction; the Marshall Plan manoeuvre of American imperialism is changing the relationship of forces on a world scale to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union.
In Czechoslovakia itself, the workers will find that they will be divested of all political rights. There will not be the vestige of workers‘ control of the state or the economy. Before there can take place in Czechoslovakia a flowering of proletarian democracy and rule as the transition stage towards communism, a political revolution will be required against the dictatorship of the Stalinists. History moves in a complicated fashion. Events in Czechoslovakia can only be understood on the basis of the degeneration of the revolution in Russia: on the one hand we see the viability of nationalised economy; on the other the shackles which Stalinism places on the proletariat in its advance towards the establishment of European and world communism.
* In 1930 census, out of 100 persons, gainfully employed in industry and trade the following percentages were Germans
Bohemia Moravia and Silesia
Glass 60 Textile 53.3
Paper 58 Paper 36.7
Textile 55.9 Graphics. 34.8
Mining 44.6 Engineering 18.7
China 42.3 Glass 13.1
Water 40.7 Shoes 13.7
Gas 3
Engineering 25.9
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